[us-marketing] Re: Setting up a Biennial Conference in North America

Hi Russel and Bryan:

Le 2012-02-22 18:37, Bryen M Yunashko a écrit :
> On Wed, 2012-02-22 at 14:39 -0500, WorldLabel.com wrote:
> > Hi Everyone
> >
> > It would be good for the community to try set up a Biennial Conference in
> > North America for LibreOffice.org. Either in Montreal, Boston or San
> > Fransisco. I think it is in our best interest to start developing the North
> > American community.
> >
> > Some investigation so far, and this is in the city of Boston: depending on
> > the number of people attending, we can use the offices at the FSF. Another
> > alternative is having the Libreoffice.org Conference as a component of
> > LibrePlanet2012: http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2012 Or a
> > conference hall at the Univ. Of Mass. can be rented at a very low cost.
> >
> > Generally we would want the conference to be at least 6 months apart from
> > the main conferences which, based on past history will always be in the EU.
> > (the exception being 2008 in China for OOo)
> >
> > A quick note back saying you would be interested in attending if there was
> > such a conference would be appreciated.
> >
> > If anyone is interested in helping investigate this and driving this
> > further, please let me know.
> >
> > Sincerely
> >
> > Russell
>
> Several thoughts from an essentially
> still-a-lurker-for-the-most-part.  :-)
>
> 1.  If a conference is created, I'd like to push for something in a more
> centralized location.  SF, Montreal and Boston are usual suspects for
> FOSS events and thus huge swaths of the Midwest get ignored.  For both
> LibreOffice and FOSS in general, its time we started making headways in
> new regions of this large continent of ours.
>
> 2.  "Growing the community" is a good thing, but this is still a rather
> vague target and we should take the time to identify what that target
> means.  Factors do influence how we determine the target.  When we say
> "community" do we mean to increase the number of users who adopt it?  Do
> we say we want to increase the number of advocates that sell
> LibreOffice?  Do we focus on increasing contributors to LibreOffice?  Is
> there enough contributors in the region to get together to make
> significant investment in a conference?
>
> Any one of these target questions will define how the conference is laid
> out.  A LibreOffice users conference is different than a LibreOffice
> hackfest conference.
>
> And whatever the determined target, it should be the one with the lowest
> hanging fruit to start with and then we can evolve into bigger and more
> complex targets with each subsequent conference.
>
> For example, a big users-targeted conference will increase the mindshare
> around LibreOffice and that will subsequently increase the number of
> potential people interested in contributing to LibreOffice in various
> aspects.  Targeting FOSS events like LFNW and SCaLE, etc. are nice but
> since most are Linux users, and most distros come with LibreOffice
> installed, our gain isn't that big in terms of adoption.
>
> So, a conference that targets Windows users and corporate software
> decision makers and trainers could create the most bang for the buck in
> a conference the first year.  Of course, I don't know how much funds TDF
> has for seeding such an initial conference.
>
> But in any case, with my own conference organizing experience, I'd love
> to join in and help organize such a conference.  I think the question
> here shouldn't be "should we do this?" but rather "how or how soon can
> we do this?"
>
> Bryen M Yunashko

While most interested in marketing LibreOffice in NA are on this list, 
perhaps you should also send/join messages to the US-Marketing list?[1]

I agree with Bryan, if a biennial conference is held in NA, it would be 
more advantageous, as Bryan suggested, to hold the conference during a 
"big users-targetted conference". I would also suggest that if this were 
done, we could, perhaps, count on a LibreOffice official from either the 
BoD, MC or BoTrustees or a delegated person[2] to "drop by" for a talk. 
This could easily be budgeted into the LibreOffice's yearly planned 
expenses.

Cheers,

Marc
* NB: recent health conditions have made it impossible for me to travel.

[1] http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/marketers/
[2] 
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Organization#According_to_current_Statutes



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